Don't Hurry, Don't Worry
by evening spirit
Summary: After Jemma returns to the team, she has trouble sleeping. She dreams about drowning and about a stranger who wears a familiar face. Eyes she used to trust...
1. Chapter 1

**Don't Hurry, Don't Worry**

* * *

It takes a moment to find bearings when it happens.

Her heart hammers in her chest, mouth fill with nonexistent water and she cannot scream out of fear of drowning. A few moves and she'll be up on the surface. Fitz's body is so heavy. And are these ceiling tiles instead of the blue sky?

Are these sheets tangled around her legs instead of cold water?

Jemma utters a strangled sob and sits up. She's shaking. She's cold and she feels wet but she's not. She can't breathe but she breathes, somehow. She wraps her arms around herself, even though she wants to wrap them around Fitz and make sure he's alive. No, not like this, not like he would want to wrap his arms around her. She doesn't love him.

But she loves him.

Her head is pounding.

* * *

Kitchen floor is cold against her bare feet. Jemma doesn't turn on the overhead light; the soft illumination from the corridor is quite enough to find the mug and the pot to heat up some milk. Only when she opens the fridge door and the light from the inside floods the kitchen, Jemma notices a figure hunched at the other end of the table.

Lance Hunter squints at her and waves his hand in a not-really-inviting gesture. But then she heats up her milk and pours it to the mug and she would maybe leave, even though she really wants to talk to someone (but Fitz has a plethora of his own issues and she would never dare to burden him with more; Skye's head seems to be in some other universe altogether and May and Coulson were never the people she would confide in. Ward was, but Ward is gone) when it is Hunter who speaks up.

"Having trouble sleeping?"

Jemma is with her back to him and she freezes, the mug half way off the counter. She has to make a conscious effort to relax her muscles, to exhale. Inhale. Exhale again, before she's able to fake a smile and turn to him.

"Yeah. Kind of. You?"

She notices he's nursing a glass with amber-colored liquid. Whiskey? It's not tea, not likely.

He nods.

"Dreams," he huffs out, takes a swig, exhales and gestures for her to sit down at the table.

Jemma pulls up the chair, plants herself next to the stranger, a mug of warm milk in front of her. Perhaps she should switch to something more effective too, she wonders.

She doesn't know Hunter, save from a couple of comments from Skye, an offhand mention, "Yes, I was married to him," from amused Bobbi and a curt "Hello" in the corridor once or twice. She's only been back forty hours after all. Thirty nine hours and forty seven minutes, give or take a few. They haven't had a chance to work together yet or even talk. Should she ask what his dreams are about?

"I dream of drowning," she says instead.

His hand, holding the bottle he pulled from under the table, hovers above the glass, immobilized for a heartbeat. Then he finishes pouring alcohol.

"That sucks. I dream of a car crash."

They sit in silence for a long while after that. Jemma is half way through her milk when Hunter speaks again.

"Sometimes it's better to tell about a bad dream. Makes it go away. Is what my ex used to say."

Jemma looks up at him, startled. Didn't Skye mention that he hated Bobbi? Now he looks almost wistful as he swirls the liquid in his glass, not taking his eyes from it. Suddenly he stops and glares at Jemma with a tight-lipped smirk.

"It's also good to talk to a person you don't know. Makes it simpler."

"You want me to tell you about my dream?"

"That, or about the thing it is about."

"It's complicated."

"I have all night."

Jemma wonders. She hasn't talked to anyone about it. After they were rescued all she worried about was Fitz and all everyone asked about was Fitz. She didn't even think about how she... she couldn't afford that. Only in the dreams...

"We were in that pod," she starts and hesitates. "You know why Fitz?..." she doesn't finish, but he apparently guesses what she means, because his brow un-furrows after a moment and he shakes his head. "Well, his brain was without oxygen when we blew up the window, because he gave the only oxygen bottle to me." Hunter's brow furrows again. "We blew up the window under water. Because the pod drowned. Fitz didn't know why..." She stops again, because now Hunter looks completely baffled, his brow high, forehead wrinkled, lips spread in a helpless smile. "I should start from the beginning."

"No. I mean yeah, it would be easier for me to understand. But you should do what suits you best."

"No. The beginning would suit me best. So, the beginning it is."

Only where's the beginning?

Jemma goes back to how the pod sank, but why were they inside the pod in the first place, why was it ejected from the plane. Who ejected it.

She finds herself looking straight into the face of her other nightmare. Sometimes she wakes up convinced that she's drowning, other times gazing straight at this stranger who wears a familiar face. Into the eyes she used to trust.

"We had a friend," she hears her voice, strained, laced with unshed tears. "We thought he was our friend. Sometimes I tell myself that we did, that we really had a friend and he died, was killed and then replaced by his evil twin. Just so I can mourn him, because I cared about him so much." She covers her lips and reins in those dangerous feelings that threaten to burst her chest right open. "But it is not true," she finally utters. "We had a wolf in our herd and he betrayed us. Fitz insisted that there must have been a reason, some explanation, but there wasn't. He betrayed us, because he never cared about us. He only cared about his mission and his Supervising Officer.

We were tracking him, me and Fitz. He stole our plane, our Bus. Garrett did, and Coulson told us to find it. And somehow... Somehow he knew we were there. He came for us. And he brought us in front of Garrett."

"Wait." Hunter reminds Jemma of his presence. "Garrett brought you in front of... Garrett? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude."

"No." Jemma wipes her cheeks. She hasn't even realized she's been crying. "Wa... Our friend. Our former friend. He found us and brought us to his Supervising Officer, to Garrett. And Garrett had... Did you hear about Project Deathlock?" Hunter shakes his head. "Well, Cybertek, a company, they developed a technology that allowed for implantation of biomechanical parts into the human body. Replacing malfunctioning organs or severed limbs."

"Like cyborgs?"

"Like cyborgs. And Garrett had such biomechanical parts in him. Fitz had this small EMP device and when we came onboard the plane and were faced with Garrett, he short-circuited him. You should have seen how Ward freaked out." Jemma stops speaking. For a moment then, she remembers, she felt sorry for Ward. He seemed so genuinely distressed. Like he truly cared about his Supervising Officer, like he truly loved Garrett. Why, she wondered then, briefly and she wonders now, why didn't he bestow such affection on them, why he only pretended to be their friend, and instead gave this pure, noble feeling to the monster. They would have loved him right back, they did love him. Fitz thought he was giving him a way out, he believed Ward only needed a little pull.

Garrett was evil, there was no doubt about it. He was the Clairvoyant, he had Coulson tortured, had Skye shot. Fitz was so certain that Ward was aware of that, but maybe he was afraid, maybe blackmailed, maybe brainwashed. But given a chance to set himself free from the influence of the monster, Ward reacted in a completely irrational way. He did everything he could to save Garrett.

There could only be one explanation – Ward in reality agreed with everything Garrett was doing. He was on Garrett's side on his own volition.

"Simmons?" Hunter's quiet question brings Jemma back to reality. He hands her a tissue and she wipes angrily at her cheeks. They're wet like after a swim. She doesn't want to cry for Ward.

"What was I saying?"

"That your former friend-turned-traitor freaked out about his SO." Ah, yes. "Is he that guy you keep in the basement?" he asks matter-off-factly but suddenly Jemma feels like struck by a lightning.

She stops dead in her tracks. She turns to Hunter and she knows very well that she looks like a moron, mouth gaping, eyes wide, but she can't do anything about it, she doesn't have the force. All her senses are focused on the question.

The guy they keep in the basement. What?

"You didn't know?" Hunter furrows his brow

Didn't know about what? She doesn't think she manages to voice the question, she doesn't think she's even breathing right now.

"Simmons? Are you okay?"

"The... No. Guy? In a basement? Who?"

"I'm... sorry." Hunter lifts both his hands. "I probably shouldn't have said anything. I thought you knew he was there. Damn it. Sorry, Simmons. Don't think about it."

Right, like she can un-hear this sentence.

Her heart is pounding and she feels even more betrayed than ever before. Ward? Here? So close? When she dreams about him every other night and wakes up screaming and soaked in sweat? So near Fitz?

"Does Fitz know?"

"He didn't. For a long while. But your friend is smart, he figured it out and he... Well, he went to kind of visit that... guy. It wasn't nice."

"I bet," Jemma breathes out. She hides her face in her palms and she feels so very, very tired. So enormously tired. Her head is splintering and her eyes sting and she can't breathe but she forces the air in and out of her lungs.

She has to know one more thing.

"Did Fitz try to ask him why, again? Did he try to forgive him?"

Hunter shakes his head with a strange expression.

"Quite on the contrary," he whispers and Jemma's world crashes around her.

Fitz's good nature, his compassion, his will to always see the best in people is one more thing that got lost at the bottom of that ocean. It is one more thing that Ward has taken away from him.

And Jemma is going to make him pay.

* * *

t.b.c.

Thank you for reading. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Don't Hurry, Don't Worry  
Chapter Two**

* * *

Days pass by and Jemma manages to not think about him. Part of her considers it good but another, the one deep inside, screams with rage. She can't talk to Fitz and it doesn't help things either. "I am different," Fits keeps repeating every time she tries to act normal. "I have changed."

"Heard you've confronted him," Jemma says one morning, after a nearly sleepless night when Ward's face hounted her, his words, "I have my orders," echoing relentlessly.

Fitz only glares, furrows his brow. She can see gears inside his head turning, then his features clear in realization. Then his nostrils widen in anger.

"Did it help any?" Jemma adds the final straw and Fitz spins on his heel and storms out of the lab, slamming the door behind him.

Jemma curls around the empty pit inside of her stomach.

* * *

"I can't believe Fitz went there," Jemma starts a conversation with Skye. She's as matter-off-fact about it, as her pounding heart will allow. She reaches for a cup from the cabinet to pour herself some coffee. Skye crunches on a cracker and stops.

"Went where?" she mumbles, her mouth full.

"To see Ward."

"Uh, no." Skye quickly chews and swallows. She gets up and stands right next to Jemma. "Fitz didn't do anything wrong, okay. It's Ward. He knows us like the back of his hand, he had months to read us, to learn things. He knows exactly what buttons to push. He's a manipulator, that's in his job description, Jemma. That bullshit he told Fitz? After what he did to you guys? I would have done the same thing!"

Jemma only glares. She waits. Skye obviously thinks that Jemma knows more than she really does and if she keeps Skye talking then maybe she'll learn something, finally. She only purses her lips in a judgemental grimmace and Skye shakes her head.

"It's not like he really hurt Ward," she takes the bait and her voice shakes as she continues. "He only showed him, a little bit, what it was like to not be able to breathe. But he set the oxygen levels right back to normal before any kind of damage was done."

Jemma's stomach feels empty again, like there's a sucking vacuum in there. What did Fitz do?

"Simmons?"

Jemma is leaning against the counter and she gasps. Tears streak down her face.

This time it's her who storms out of the room.

* * *

Jemma knows where the cell they keep Ward in is located. She's known that from the first day she's learned they have him on the base. It wasn't all that hard to find and she's smart. Now, after her conversations with Fitz and with Skye, she's finally ready to go see him.

Last night she had a dream. She saw Ward's face moving away from her, smaller and smaller, his form disappearing in the distance, except this time it was him who was drowning. She remembers feeling glad, satisifed. Relieved. But at the same time she heard her own voice screaming his name with a completely different emotion. Like she didn't want him to die.

But he had died. Her Grant Ward died and was replaced by his evil twin brother.

* * *

Except it's not true and her Grant Ward is there somewhere, inside the man now occupying that basement no one talks to her about. Either that or he never existed. And Jemma can't decide what would be worse. If he never existed it would mean she had been wrong, she had trusted someone who only had one goal – to hurt her and everyone she loved. She had been fooled by sweet declarations like "I'll catch you if you fall."

Her eyes sting. It's another night and she doesn't sleep, she sits on her bed, knees drawn up to her chin, rocking, and her eyes sting, her throat chokes.

If that Grant Ward who promised to catch her existed, though... If he was real...

She has to find out.

The floor is cold underneath her bare feet. She grabs the tablet and walks down the corridor she walked before. She knows it's here, he's here. Vault D.

The Playground base is silent in the middle of the night.

Vault D is pitch black.

When Jemma turns on the light she sees stairs and an empty room, one of its walls white. Maybe it's not here, she thinks but then she realizes that the white wall glows with a faint light, hums. She slowly descends and touches the square on the tablet that says "opaque/transparent". The white wall swooshes to the side revealing another room behind it.

It's quite spacious, with some soft fabric tiles on the walls, but the only furniture in it is a bed and there's a figure, dressed in an unobtrusive gray uniform, laying on the bed. The person, the man, is curled on his side, with his back to Jemma but she knows who that is. She is certain.

She stares, transfixed.

One step, then another and suddenly she hears a buzz and the air before her lights up, revealing a power barrier that's still firmly in place.

Person on the bed jumps up and swirls around, so he's sitting now and facing her.

And Jemma takes a step back more frightened by this face than by the sudden activation of the barrier. She doesn't know this man. This bearded, dark, large man. But she knows his eyes. It is Ward.

Jemma swallows and stops her slow walk backwards as soon as she realizes what she is doing. She's not gonna run from him.

She watches him as he sits on the bed, stiff like a pole, gripping the side of the bed so hard his knuckles turn white. He glares at her. It has taken him a moment to recognize her, he squinted at her, furrowed his brow and then, Jemma isn't sure... The look on his face resembles pure terror for a split second. Then it smoothes out. Remains waiting. Then confused. Waiting, trying to be patient. Unsure.

Finally...

"What do you want?" he utters in an uncertain, part fearful, part fake-nonchalant way. "What are you gonna do?"

Jemma has trouble with the answer. Eventually she settles for a faint, "I'm not sure." She has come here in some hazy, half-asleep state, hoping to find something but she doesn't think anymore that it is here. "What do you think I'm gonna do?"

"You can do..." the prisoner stammers, "You can do whatever you want."

Jemma is not sure she understands. "Whatever I want?"

"Yeah. Yes, I can take it." He inclines his head to the side and adds in a whisper. "It probably won't be enough anyway."

It. Does he mean... "Like... What Fitz did?" she breathes out, more appalled, apparently, than he is, by the thought.

The prisoner shrugs. "He didn't hurt me. I'm... I'm fine."

Jemma runs her hand through her hair and has to turn away from him, can't look at him for a moment. When Skye told her what happened between Fitz and Ward down here, she couldn't believe it but now, the way Ward speaks about it. It makes her want to vomit. She wipes her face, though, and looks at him again.

He just stares, expectant.

"He didn't hurt me," he repeats. "And I..." he shrugs again. "I deserved it... I guess? For what I did." He stands up abruptly and takes a few steps toward her. "I didn't know. What happened, I mean. Coulson only told me that Fitz was different, but I didn't know... how. How bad. Didn't know what happened to you... either. But..." He laces and unlaces his fingers and he smiles in an awkward, half-mad way. His voice breaks when he says, "I'm hap-py to see you." Then he just looks at her without a word, for a few long heartbeats and Jemma doesn't know how to respond. He finally continues, still lacing and unlacing his fingers. "I am happy that you... That you are alright. You are alright, are you? You weren't hurt?"

"No," Jemma replies. "I mean yes, I'm alright. Physically." She's quite thrown off right now, though. She knows she rambles but she can't stop. "Physcially I'm okay, I wasn't hurt, the way Fitz was, but I still..." She doesn't know why she tells him that. "I still dream about drowning. More often now, that I'm back at the base. Do you?..." her voice fails her and she needs to take a couple of breaths. Ward furrows his brow. "Do you dream about it sometimes?"

He hesitates. Looks away. "No," he admits. "Not anymore." He shakes his head and turns his back on her. Walks toward the bed, then stops. "I did. At first."

"Why did you do this?" The question startles her and him, both.

He looks over his arm. "Why did I?..." turns to face her again. "...Eject the pod?"

"Yeah..."

"I..." he draws his arms up in a slow shrug, looks away, spreads his arms and brings them together quickly. He chooses the next words very carefully. "I knew the plane was flying low. And I knew, from the specifications of the pod, that it was designed to float. But it didn't, right?" He looks to her for confirmation. "I figured." He shakes his head. "I didn't anticipate all variables, didn't predict... There wasn't enough time." He steps near her again, this time so close that the energy barrier buzzes. He freezes, looks up and down the orange glowing grid, then takes one step bacwards and looks at Jemma. "I had to figure out something quickly and that was the only thing that came to mind."

"I don't understand."

"To get you off the plane. I had to get you off the plane."

Jemma stares at him, stares at his face that looks so strange. It's not just the beard and the disheveled hair, the sickly-white color of his cheeks and shadows under his eyes. She wonders briefly when had he last seen the sun. There's more to him that's different, than just the outside appearance. His movements are sharp and nervous and his eyes... His eyebrows drawn up give him an expression of someone expectant, hopeful even. But he can't logically hope she will believe that...

"You were trying to save us?" she asks incredulously.

"Fitz didn't tell you?"

Ah, so that's what the conversation was about. No wonder Fitz reacted the way he did, Jemma wants to strangle Ward herself. "I didn't talk about it with Fitz," she utters. "I talked with Skye. She told me how you manipulate everyone."

"It's not... I don't manipulate you, this is true."

"That you were trying to save us?" Jemma raises her voice. "If you were, then why didn't you just say so? Why didn't you tell us?"

"There were cameras everywhere on that plane!" Ward speaks louder too. "Garrett would have known! Besides, even if I did, would you have believed me? Would you have trusted me? How was I supposed to convince you? What was I supposed to say that you would understand and believe, and he wouldn't?"

Well, Jemma doesn't know. She tries to remember that moment but she draws a blank. She was terrified, that's all she knows.

"You..." Ward speaks again, his voice quiet once more. "You locked yourselves in that pod _from the inside_. I had no way of getting to you if you wouldn't let me in. And Garrett ordered me to shoot you."

"He was dying, though. Fitz short-circuited him. If you just waited."

"He survived, didn't he?" Ward laughs in a way that sends chills down Jemma's spine. "He defied death so many times before, I really couldn't take that chance."

She still can't agree this was the only way, the only choice he could have made. "You could have defended us. You could have opposed him somehow. You could have made it obvious to me and Fitz that you were on our side in some way that we would believe! And together... If you told us, if you really told us..." She isn't sure that's true. She isn't sure she would believe anything he said then. She probably wouldn't but she needs to believe that she might. That this might have all happened differently.

He shots her down with ease. "Did you notice how many soldiers there were on the plane? They would have overpowered us within seconds. I was the only one who could stand up to them in any meaningful way, but probably not long enough. Garrett expected me to kill you and he didn't care how. The moment he realized that I wasn't going to do as ordered... All bets would be off. He would simply order someone else to do it and he'd make me watch. Or he would torture you and make me watch. He might order someone to torture you, he could order me!"

There is desperation in his voice that makes Jemma look up at his face. He takes a step back and averts his eyes, watches his palms, spreads his fingers, then curls them into balls, uncurls them again.

"So you were afraid of him?" Jemma starts in a cold voice, but heats up as she speaks. "Is that it? You were scared, so you got rid of the problem? Why were you with him in the first place, if you were so scared of him? You knew he was a monster, you knew what he did, all those things! He ordered Skye shot, he tortured Coulson! You knew about it and you were still with him!"

"No. No, I didn't know that," he tries to cut in but his voice is too faint, Jemma shouts louder.

"Garrett was the Clairvoyant!"

"But I didn't know that. Coulson told me, in the Hub."

"Seriously?"

"Garrett didn't tell me everything!" Ward spreads his arms now and Jemma sees ragged vertical lines on the inside of his wrists. The notion of their meaning makes her gag. She's unable to form a question and he continues talking. "I was deep undercover, the less I knew, the better, that's how it works. I didn't know that he ordered Skye shot! Or Coulson. God, I helped you get Coulson back from Raina's hands, I had no idea Garrett had anything to do with it, do you think I would work against him if I knew? He said there would be no bloodshed and then he changed the rules of the game."

Jemma tears her eyes away from scars on his forearms and looks into his eyes.

"My God, I can't believe that," she whispers. "That man was a monster! And you knew that, at least part of it, you must have known. You were afraid of him for God's sake."

"No. No, that's not it," he denies but Jemma doesn't believe it, she can't believe it.

"Why didn't you tell us?" she demands, because he must have known, it's not possible to be so blind! "Why didn't you just ask for help? You..." Or maybe he really wasn't afraid of Garrett, maybe they were in this together all this time and Ward... Ward she believed was real – wasn't. She was wrong, all this time, she is still wrong.

Her head is spinning and she feels tears streak down her face but she doesn't do anything to wipe them. "You were supposed to take him to the Fridge, get him locked up." She remembers weakly. "And instead, you freed him, you killed Victoria Hand. Then you released all those people from the Fridge, stole dangerous artifacts. Then you returned to us!" She's outright crying now. "You came back to kidnap Skye, you murdered Eric Koenig! Do you realize that I had to do autopsy on him?" She's still shaking at the memory. "I had to determine the cause of his death! I had to figure out how he was killed and by whom. And then... Then..." She deflates. She just wants to go back to her room, to sleep, to forget. To pretend. "If you told us, if you asked for help, you know we would have helped you. You wouldn't have to be afraid of him..." Except it's not true. He was never afraid of Garrett.

"But that's not it, Jemma," Ward all but confirms her thoughts. "I wasn't afraid. I was... Garrett saved me," he explains in a quiet tone, as if talking to a chils. "He saved my life, I owed him... I owed him more than I could ever repay in my entire life. When I went with him and Victoria Hand... I didn't intend to break him out. He had done things I couldn't forgive him for. He deserved to be locked up, but to kill him... I was so angry. So angry. But then Victoria Hand gave me a choice. She offered me a chance to kill the real Clairvoyant. I shot the wrong one, she asked me if I would shoot the right one. And don't think I haven't hesitated. I have. I considered killing him right then and there. But then I looked into his eyes and I knew I couldn't. I could lock the man who saved my life in prison, but I couldn't kill him. That's why I killed her. And then... There wasn't any choice anymore. He was in charge again."

Jemma looks up at him and she feels nothing anymore. She's drained.

"Victoria... Hand... ordered you to... shoot Garrett?" she stammers. "Before you got to the Fridge, or when you were already there?"

"On route."

A chuckle escapes Jemma's throat. Then she starts outright laughing. She's laughing and she's sobbing and she can't stand, so she sits on the only chair in the room, the one in front of the barrier. She has no idea how long she laughs like this but when she looks up, Ward stands there, in front of her, with a concerned look on his face and that makes her laugh all over again.

Shorter this time, though. She calms down after a few breaths.

There's a few more things she needs to discuss with him. Like, the scars on his wrists, how empty and dark this room is, how often he has visitors, such things. And why does he lie, that he was never afraid of Garrett. Was he brainwashed? Maybe he was brainwashed.

Or maybe she's stupid and naïve.

* * *

.


End file.
